The main genocide specialists in the world said that the War of Israel against Gaza responds to the legal definition of genocide.
The International Association of Genocide scholars (IAGS) adopted a resolution on Monday, adding to the choir of countries, rights defense groups and other organizations which believe that Israel commits a genocide in Gaza.
Israel killed more than 63,500 people and injured more than 160,000 in his war against Gaza. During the attack by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, 1,139 people were killed and around 200 were caught in captivity.
Here is everything you need to know about the declaration and the body that does it.
What has been announced and announced it?
IAGS, a body of academics of 500 members founded in 1994, is the main global association of researchers in genocide.
Eighty-six percent of IAGS members voted in favor of a resolution indicating that the policies and actions of Israel in Gaza fulfill the definition of the genocide stated during the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide Crime of 1948.
“This is a final declaration of experts in the field of studies on the genocide that what is happening in the field in Gaza is the genocide,” said IAGS and professor of international law at the University of Western Australia on Monday.
How is genocide defined under international law?
The 1948 genocide convention defines genocide as follows: “One of the following acts committed with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:
Kill members of the group; Cause serious bodily or mental damage to group members; Deliberately inflicting the living conditions of the group calculated to cause its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transfer the group’s children to another group. »»
What did Iags based on?
In short, Iags founded its decision on the United Nations Genocides Convention.
He also said that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined in international humanitarian law and Rome’s status of the International Criminal Court”.
Among the Israeli crimes whose resolution underlined was “blind and deliberate attacks against civilians and civil infrastructure (hospitals, houses, commercial buildings, etc.) of Gaza”.
Iags have recognized several acts of Israel against the Palestinians, in particular:
- torture,
- arbitrary detention,
- sexual and reproductive violence,
- Deliberate attacks on health professionals, humanitarian workers and journalists,
- deliberately deprive people of food, water and drugs,
- moving 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,
- demolish more than 90% of housing infrastructure,
- kill whole multigenerational families, and
- Mutting or injuring more than 50,000 children.
The IAGS also referred to comments made by Israeli officials and a plan that first launched US President Donald Trump and supported by the Israeli government to expel the Palestinians from Gaza as additional proof that genocide criteria were met.
You can read the full resolution here (PDF).
How is this resolution significant?
The decision may not push for action singularly, but it adds to the choir internal organizations, human rights groups and experts declaring the War of Israel against Gaza a genocide.
As the world’s leading body of genocide specialists, IAGS resolution has already received a lot of attention from the consumer media.
However, the UN and many Western nations say they will only consider it as a genocide if a court rule it.
The UN Superior Court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), examines the case of South Africa which argues that Israel commits a genocide, but a decision is not expected before 2027.
How did Israel respond to the announcement?
The Israeli government has described the decision as “shame”.
“The IAGs have established a historic precedent – for the first time, the” scholarship scholars “accuse the very victim of the genocide – despite the attempted genocide of Hamas against the Jewish people,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel said in a statement.
What position did the UN took on this question?
The UN has repeatedly denounced the actions of Israel in Gaza, but did not officially say that it was a genocide.
Last week, hundreds of United Nations staff wrote to the High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, asking him to label him explicitly as a genocide.
Turk hasn’t done it yet.
“The labeling of an event as a genocide is up to a competent legal authority,” the UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told Reuters.
Aside from Turk, the Special United Nations Committee to investigate Israeli practices affecting human rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs in the occupied territories found “the War Methods of Israel in accordance with genocide” in November 2024.
A month earlier, in October 2024, UN experts called on the world community “to examine their relations and to avoid being an accomplice of the commission by this crime by Israel to the Palestinian people in Gaza”, adding: “It is important to call a genocide genocide”.
What is the situation in Gaza?
Terrible.
Israel has killed more than 63,000 people since October 2023 and some two million Palestinians have been moved.
A large part of the Gaza strip is in ruins after rehearsed attacks by the Israeli army, and Israel has now called thousands of reservists for a new offensive on Gaza City.
On August 29, the UN said that the descent into a “massive famine” had started in Gaza.
Israel also targets journalists, in what media freedom groups say an effort to remove reality on the ground in Gaza to reach the outside world.
